


Heaven Isn't Far

by misscam



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-14
Updated: 2009-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-17 12:44:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/176976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misscam/pseuds/misscam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In between her mortal forms, the heavens have always been a home. [Adama/Roslin]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heaven Isn't Far

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sanctified](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/2828) by Trialia. 



> Spoilers for "Daybreak p.2". A remix of [Sanctified](http://trialia.livejournal.com/433656.html) by **trialia** for the [](http://community.livejournal.com/bsg_remix/profile)[**bsg_remix**](http://community.livejournal.com/bsg_remix/). Many thanks to **lyricalviolet** for beta.

Heaven Isn't Far (Sanctified Remix)  
by **misscam**

II

Three days after Bill buries Laura on a hilltop with a view of the dawn, she joins him at it and tells him the light is indeed almost heavenly, just like he told her.

She should know. In between her mortal forms, the heavens have always been a home.

II

"You're..."

He can't say the words, Bill finds. They seem to stop somewhere in his throat, almost choking him. She's...

"Yes," Laura says, the sun making her hair seem redder than his memories of it. Her smile to him is soft and apologetic and he wonders how much of his reaction she has anticipated.

"You're not a ghost," he says, and her hand briefly brushes his arm as if to underline that. "You're not in my head. You're dead, but that's just..."

"Just the mortal body I took," she finishes and he finds himself wincing at the words. Laura, the Laura he loved (loves) is just the mortal form of something he didn't (doesn't?) even believe in.

She looks all human, but the ring on her finger he placed there was after her death. She's alive after her death. She _died_ but she's here.

"Did you give yourself cancer?"he asks sharply as the thought occurs to him, and she immediately shakes her head.

"No. But life isn't life without all the risks of it. It just happened, Bill."

"It just killed you."

"Yes," she agrees. "I was mortal and human in every way. I lived like one, died like one, loved like one."

Loved him, by her own words. He remembers them. They were desired then, now they feel almost bitter.

"You frakked an atheist," he says and her eyes slide from him to the horizon, as if there is something in her gaze she doesn't want him to see.

"Life's little ironies," she says lightly.

He doesn't say anything at that, but Laura Roslin always read his silences as well as anything and she kneels in front of him.

"Bill," she says. It sounds strangely like a plea.

He doesn't turn away when she kisses him, her lips feeling strangely as he remembers them.

II

Bill is angry, Laura can tell. (Oddly, she still thinks of herself as Laura. At least here, with him.)

It's in the restraint when she kisses him, the guarded look on his face, the tension in his balled fists. He's not quite letting it out, but not quite letting it go either.

He has to do one or the other. He can't hold it forever, even if she has forever to wait.

"Bill," she says again, touching his face. "This wasn't a trick or a game. It was a life for me, everything in it real."

"Yet you're here after it."

"That's why I'm here after it."

He measures her words and she lets him. Bill Adama can take his time, but she loved (loves) him for it. It's strange how the same little quirks that annoyed at first can become endearing in the end. What a difference love makes to humans. Made to her.

His sudden kiss is angry, lips hard and demanding against hers. She still leans up into it, his knees brushing against her shoulders as she moves closer.

"This isn't forgiveness," he murmurs. Bill doesn't always offer it, but when he does, it's always absolute and never just a word.

"I didn't ask for it," she says and she can see the memory of another time she told him just that in his eyes.

Kobol. She lived a few mortal lives there and watched it for lifetimes in between, as the others did too.

"Laura," he says, the first time he's said her name since she died. He seems to realise the same and she thinks maybe this is the moment where he truly accepts it.

She kisses him lightly, his fingers and the wind playing in her hair. It's a warm, beautiful day on Earth (take two) and Laura (take two) can still feel close to mortal enough to enjoy it.

"You're still frakking an atheist," Bill says as he follows her down on the grass

"I'm just sleeping with William Adama," she says, and does too.

II

He awakes before her, her steady breath gradually easing him from sleep to something not quite alert. Her fingers have curled around his wrist during the night, and he watches her grip. It's soft, but he knows she doesn't let go.

He wonders if he even wants her to. Kara came back not the same, and he still disregarded that because she was Kara enough to him.

"Can you just be Laura?" he whispers fiercely, and her eyes flutter open to look at him.

"For the rest of your life," she promises.

He wonders what it will cost her to see him die.

II

The part of Laura that isn't Laura has seen stars born and stars die, and she still loves to watch them in a sky.

She spends nights next to Bill, watching them while he sleeps, sometimes making herself fall asleep under them. She doesn't have to, but she can, and Bill seems to like the little lie of her needing it.

They're building her cabin, rock by rock, board by board. She's seen cities rise and fall, but building feels so slow when it's doing the work and not watching it.

She lets her body feel the aches of the effort and Bill seems to like that too, kissing the blisters on her fingers. She doesn't stop the rain even if the roof isn't finished and Bill curses at that but wouldn't have it differently; clothes soaked they simply remove them and his fingers are soon everywhere the rain has been.

They go hungry a little when their traps doesn't catch anything and she gets as sick of nuts as she did algae extract, even if she could close her eyes and taste everything in the universe.

She always did choose the pains of mortality as well as the joys of it, or it wouldn't be mortality at all. Not all of the others always understood that, but a few did and echoed her choices.

When the cabin is finished, Bill will die, she knows.

She's not going to stop that either.

II

One morning after they've moved in, Bill awakes to the sharpness of pain in his chest and Laura looking at him, her eyes glinting a little with tears. She looks like grief and he wonders whose.

"What is it?" he asks.

"Your heart," she says. "It's about to stop."

"Oh," he says faintly, and feels it. He's dying and she's grieving, but isn't changing it.

He loves her a little for that.

"I'll see you soon," she tells him as he closes his eyes, strangely happy her voice is the last thing before silence.

II

Three days after Laura buries Bill on a hilltop next to her own mortal body, he joins her at it and tells her a lot of choice words about keeping secrets.

"You always enjoyed mortality," she says when he's paused for a breath. "I didn't want to end it for you too soon."

He looks annoyed at that, probably because it's only a half truth.

She always enjoyed it too, enough to want to experience it a little again through him. He knows it. He knows all of her, even more so now.

"We always did this together," she says softly, putting a hand on his arm.

"Playing mortal," he scoffs, and she rubs his arm a little. Even mortal, they always seem to end up in each other's vicinity, a little drawn by something greater.

They just never know that greater is themselves until after. Immortality's little ironies.

"It's not playing when it's real for as long as it lasts," she says.

"You always say that."

"I always mean it."

Always manage to convince him of it too, she doesn't say. Will again some day.

Got an eternity to do it, after all.

FIN


End file.
